SUMMARY:  Smallville, Lex.  Point of view.  What *is* Lex looking
for, anyway?

ARCHIVE:  Please.  Wherever you like, and as often as possible.


Soothsaying, by Mercutio (mercutio@europa.com)


Sometimes he could almost see what the future would be like,
without need of help from a dying seer.

When his father had done something even more degrading and
impossible to stand than before, and Lex found himself nearly
aflame with the need to destroy him before he destroyed everything
-- and he could see it.  See how it must go.  It was all very Sith
apprentice really.  A thought that never failed to draw a smile of
black humor.  In order to strike his father down, he would have to
become his father.  Really, in some ways, it would be the
masterwork of Lionel Luthor's life -- finally setting his son into
the mold he had -- always? -- wanted him to be.

A phone call to the right person and it could be done.  Lex didn't
have anyone on staff who would commit murder for him, but no
matter.  He could find someone.  Or if that were too insecure --
and, inevitably, trusting other people with matters that delicate
invariably was -- he could probably concoct something in his lab,
some chemical that could kill his father, or better still, simply
destroy him from the inside.  Early onset Alzheimer's.  No real way
to diagnose that, was there?  You had to do an autopsy to make
sure, and you couldn't autopsy the living.

Or a scandal perhaps.  Something to force Lionel to give up control
of the company to his son.  And Lex, shocked and saddened, would
take over.

It was all too clear sometimes.

And when Lex had taken over in that manner -- and he could see no
other way it could play out in all of his imaginings -- he would be
his father.

Would be the despicable thing without limits or sense that his
father was.  Would be the thing that needed taking down.

Lex wasn't sure if he even wanted to be good -- but there was a
vast difference between being evil and being stupid about it.  And
between wanting to rule the world and cruelty.  His father would
have enjoyed the spectacle of Clark tied to that piece of wood out
in the cornfield, he thought.  Would never have done it himself,
not when he could hire someone, but he and those who had done that
were more alike than not.  And maybe Lex would have enjoyed it too,
once.  For a while.  For that time when he'd tried... well, even
now he wasn't sure what he'd been trying to do by taking every drug
anyone offered him, and most of the other things that were offered
to him.  Escape perhaps.  Except that Sith apprentices have a
destiny, and their masters don't let go of them lightly.

If at all.

His father knew every move Lex would make, could make.  They'd
studied the same sources after all.  Machiavelli, Sun Tzu, Lionel
Luthor...  Sending him here, to Smallville, to literally rot in a
pile of shit -- well, that was the Art of War in one.  'Hence to
fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence;
supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance
without fighting.'  And wasn't that was this exile was about?

He disdained the crystal bottles of liquor, and instead grabbed a
bottle of water, twisting the top off.  First he ascribed his
father with the desire to make Lex rise up against him, then with
the desire to crush him entirely.  Hell, perhaps it was both. 
Lionel probably already had a plan prepared for subduing him when
Lex did make his attempt.  Lex knew he would in his father's place. 
Several plans.

Except this wasn't the way he'd treat a kid.  Didn't know what he'd
do exactly, but watching Clark -- watching Clark with his parents
was giving him some ideas.

There weren't a lot of genuinely devoted parents in his set.  Maybe
it was that the really rich were genuinely weird, or perhaps just
more to do with how most genuinely devoted parents didn't send
their children off to the kind of boarding schools Lex had
experienced.  They were good preparation though, for the life he
had to lead.  And not academically either.

Excellent preparation for being an outcast in Smallville.  For
being emotionally isolated from everyone.  For the not-so hidden
ridicule.  For the contempt he got from his father.  For the
future.

The future which loomed inexorably before him.  Darkness and greed. 
The corruption of power, and it was all about power, not really the
money, and when it came right down to it, that wasn't what Lex
wanted at all.  Not at all.

If he'd wanted anything for himself, it'd been to be a scientist. 
Forget about making money.  True power was in the secrets of the
universe.  A kind of power that mattered more than who you
controlled and how many people's lives you could ruin with a phone
call.

His father didn't see that, and... that was good.

The less his father understood about him the better.

And his father was understanding him less and less well since he'd
moved to Smallville.  Since he'd crashed his car.  Since Clark had
saved his life.  Since everything had changed, and Lex didn't know
what was different or how it was different, but it was.

Some of it he could define.  Near death experience, check.  He'd
done the reading since then, and he knew from that and from the
crash itself how it could change someone.  And funny how reading
about it could make it more real, more understandable than it was
just going through it.  Or not so funny or so strange, that he'd
had so little contact with these emotions prior to this that he
didn't know what to make of them now.  Didn't know what to make of
a desire for redemption, or goodness, or... or any of the others.

Some of it he couldn't.  Didn't understand why he couldn't quantify
Clark Kent.  Couldn't buy him with gifts.  Couldn't stop watching
him.  Couldn't stop envying him his friends, his parents.  Couldn't
understand what he was longing for, why he wanted it, or why he'd
never had it.

But he thought when he did -- when he knew what had made him go
into that factory alone to try to reason with an armed madman, what
made him try to sacrifice himself for people he hardly knew -- then
he would finally have the beginnings of something that *could*
bring down his father.

Could make a new destiny for Lex.  One that didn't make him into
everything he loathed.

One that didn't kill little old ladies just by them looking at it.


-the end-